


where the love light gleams

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: also it's kind of about christmas but not really??, on the run fic i guess?, this is... weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 08:50:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9064795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: so this is part of a larger five things fic (the part that stuck with me the most, idk if i’ll ever finish the other four things.) is it au from my own damn au or au from the show? …a little of both i guessthis is also my die hard of christmas fics (it takes place at christmas, but isn’t very christmas-y?). i would be lying if i said parts of this weren’t partially inspired by stranger things.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so this is part of a larger five things fic (the part that stuck with me the most, idk if i’ll ever finish the other four things.) is it au from my own damn au or au from the show? …a little of both i guess  
> this is also my die hard of christmas fics (it takes place at christmas, but isn’t very christmas-y?). i would be lying if i said parts of this weren’t partially inspired by stranger things.

There is a sidewalk in the place where they live, with two handprints, and the names _Samantha_ and _Jeffrey,_ carved into the cement. William is fascinated by them, fitting his hand into the prints. “That’s your aunt,” the smoker says to him, pointing to Samantha’s name and ignoring Emily completely. She ignores him right back, and gets a rock to scratch their names into the pavement - _William_ and _Emily_ in scrawly white lines so light they look like they might fade. The smoker gets mad and shuffles them back inside, but she notes with satisfaction later that their names are still there. Some small proof of their existence. That seems like enough.

***

William and Emily are siblings, somehow. Except William hasn’t been here forever - Emily still remembers the day they brought him in, a babbling baby who’d the nurses attended to almost constantly. She’d leaned over his crib and told him stories, and he’d giggled like he’d found her fascinating. When she was younger, _Peter Pan_ had been a favorite of hers, so she’d thought _fairies_. Now she realizes that this is the closest they will ever have to magic in this grimy little room of theirs. Whatever they can do is not normal, but it’s definitely not magic.

The smoker tells them that they have the same mother. What happened with the father, Emily will never know. She knows William has one, because the smoker claims to be William’s grandfather but not Emily’s. She wonders what had to happen with their mother for both of them to end up here. In her mind, it wasn’t her choice. In her mind, they have someone who loves them out there.

The smoker likes William better than Emily anyways. He usually doesn’t pay any attention to her when he visits their room, so Emily usually just sits on her bed and reads a book, pictures his  head exploding. She can’t tell how William feels about him until one day when he is six, and he sits heavily on his bed after the smoker leaves and says, _I hate him_ in that silent way they have.

Emily raises an eyebrow and replies, _You do?_

_Yeah, I don’t trust him. He doesn’t care about us. I can tell._

They’ve always been able to do this, this silent communication. When William was three and they figured it out, Emily had warned him never to tell anyone. _It has to be our secret, or they’ll take us away and do more tests_ , she’d said, and William’s eyes had widened and he nodded. Both of them hated the tests that are done on a frequent basis.

It isn’t too bad of a place to live, the base (if they ignore the tests). They rarely leave their room, bury themselves in books and paper and crayons. That’s where most of their knowledge comes from, books.

William wants to know about their mother. “Did you ever know her?” he asks Emily one day, shoving away the copy of _Peter Pan_. He’s been asking questions tiredly for the past couple of weeks, and she’s been avoiding them, doesn’t want to let him down.

She thinks she had parents, a long time ago, but they can’t be William’s parents because they died. She remembers that. And her mother always told her she was adopted, so that must mean she has a different mother somewhere. She thinks she remembers someone who sat with her on the floor and colored, who whispered things about how they might live together someday. She thinks that the woman had bright hair like her, eyes and freckles like hers and William’s.

But still. It’s just a thought, probably not real. She’s been telling herself it can’t be real for years. She shakes _Peter Pan_ at William for emphasis. “These kids don’t have parents. And look how much fun they’re having!”

“Wendy and John and Michael had parents, and they left them.” William scowls. _They didn’t know what they had when they had it_ , she thinks in a moment of weakness that she usually doesn’t allow herself. “Besides, that’s not fair. We’re not having any fun, Em.”

No, they aren’t. Emily sighs and sets the book face down on her knee to mark their place. She tells William everything she remembers reluctantly, leaving out the saddest parts about her first parents because sadness is infectious in this place and feels toxic, like poison. He is practically bouncing by the end of her tale, an eager look on his face, despite how many times she told him it might all be false memories. “So you think she’s out there somewhere? Do you think she’s our mother?”

“Might be,” Emily says. She remembers what happened after her time with maybe-their-mother - that she was put to sleep in the hospital and woke up in a box that someone lifted her out of and unclasped something like a gold cross from her neck as they carried her off. The memories seem too vivid to be fake, honestly. She wants them to be real, even if it means that their mother has never come looking for them. She keeps coming up for excuses in her mind: _maybe she didn’t know, maybe they threatened us, or her, if she ever came looking…_

William keeps bouncing, grinning with excitement. His happiness is as infectious as the sadness, here in this room that is too small for any other emotions, so Emily grins, too. “We could go find her,” he says. “And then there would be someone out there who loves us.”

“We love each other,” Emily says stubbornly, but it doesn’t matter. She wants them to have someone to love and protect them as much as he does. Like Atticus in _To Kill A Mockingbird_. Someone who would take care of them, better than the smoker and the nurses do. She hates this feeling, this _orphan_ feeling, like _Harry Potter_ or something. Except she doesn’t even get fame or friends or a cute girlfriend out of it; she gets a creepy cigarette smoker who she sometimes calls Voldemort in her head out of spite.

“I want someone else, Em.” William pouts up at her, his blue eyes wide and pleading. _Please, please. We can run away, I know we could,_ he adds silently. They don’t know if they’re listened to - all signs point to no - but talking about running away is too dangerous to discuss out loud.

They’ve talked about it before, but have never actually tried it. It seems too scary, being past the fences and nurses and out in the _real_ world. Eating not-gross food, wearing real clothes, and reading new books (and maybe having a real family, a real life someday).

But then again, they’ve been practicing their mind powers a lot more, which would help with the fences and the nurses. They have to get out of here. They can’t live like this. The memories are real, and that means there’s more out there than this stupid Air Base.

William pokes her arm a few times, eyes wide and pleading. She smiles - smirks, really - tousles his hair, and nods slightly.

***

They make it past the fence, running as fast as they can. Emily says, “We have to be careful,” and Will says, “I have the mind thingy, _remember_?” in a pointed, pouty voice. Having a telekinetic little brother has its advantages, Emily has to admit.

It’s cold, and it gets even colder when they stop running. They don’t have any clothes besides the pathetic little hospital gowns they’ve worn for years and their over-shaggy hair. “We need to find some real clothes,” Emily says, teeth chattering.

They walk in the cold until they find a Wal-Mart, something they’ve only ever read about. William’s eyes light up in excitement. _We can’t go in, though,_ he thinks at her. _We don’t have any money._

_Doesn’t matter,_ she thinks back. _We have the mind thingy. And we’re fast._ He grins with mischievous excitement.

Inside, it’s like nothing they’ve ever seen before. Music is playing over the intercom, a luxury Emily has rarely heard. She listens absently until she hears something familiar: _Christmas Eve will find me, where the love light gleams_. “It’s Christmas,” William whispers, in the same awed tone that he’s seemed to have adopted since they escaped. They’ve never celebrated, but he makes her read _A Christmas Carol_ every time it gets cold. He loves the ghosts. And they’ve talked about Christmas sometimes, the parts they’ve pieced together from their books. They’ve never celebrated, of course, but nurses have made offhand comments that cause them to piece dates together.

_I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams,_ the singer continues mournfully. Emily hopes they’ll get home, too - some kind of home, at least. She has no idea where home is though. Or if they’ll be welcome. Their home is entirely a dream. She thinks that the singer has nothing to be sad about, because he has a home to go home to.

They wander the food aisles, and William is disappointed at the lack of butter beer or chocolate frogs. “But that was wizard food, remember, Will?” Emily reminds him, taking a box of Pop Tarts off of the shelf.

“Yeah, but there’s no way we’re Muggles,” he says, making Oreos fly off of the shelf and into his hand automatically as if to prove his point.

“Okay, true, but this is still the Muggle world.” She has no idea if wizards are real or not, but she knows that she and Will are not normal. That much is clear.

They get a lot of stares in their hospital gowns, washed out under the fluorescent lights. One man tries to ask them if they need help, and Emily fixes him with a glare hot enough to melt snow. They get more stares when they go into the clothes section and change in the changing rooms. William wants to try everything, but Emily is more efficient. She grabs jeans and t-shirts and sweaters off of the rack and they try them on quickly before choosing them.

She steals bags from one section and stuffs them with their food, changes of clothes, and a pair of scissors. (She’s had annoyingly long hair for years; it _has_ to go.) They walk to the front of the store. _Look confident,_ she silent speaks to William, and he squares his shoulders.

“Kids, you need to pay for those,” says a woman in a blue Wal-Mart vest by the door. William stops, but Emily keeps walking, tugging at his sweater sleeve. “Kids!” The woman tries to grab him. Emily twists her neck to look at her, and she goes flying back to hit the floor. “Stop those kids!” she shouts, and she sounds like she’s in pain, but they keep running. Feet are hitting the linoleum behind them, and William turns his head back, and their shoes slide across the floor as they’re thrown backwards. They run until the lights of the Wal-Mart are far behind them, until their lungs burn.

***

“What’s the plan?” William asks. They’re standing at a bus station among a group of assumed Christmas travelers. They’ve sported haircuts Emily did herself in the dimming light of the rising sun - Emily’s cut raggedly to her chin, uneven edges sticking out strangely, and William’s looking like it’s been attacked by a lawn mower. Despite their street urchin hairstyles, they look halfway normal wearing the jeans and sweaters shoplifted from Wal-Mart.

_Follow my lead_ , Emily says in a low voice. She’s spotted an older woman in a Santa Claus sweater nearby, a good contender for what she has in mind. _And start crying. Convincingly._

Covering his face, William lets out a series of loud, sorrowful sobs into his palms. Emily kneels beside him, wrapping both arms around him and saying loud enough for the woman to hear, “It’s okay, Will, shhh, we’ll get home somehow…”

“How?” he wails, catching the woman’s attention. Emily continues to shush him, stroking his tattered hair, watching her approach out of the corner of her eye. (She’s honestly impressed by William’s improvisation skills, but she supposes after years of lying to the nurses they’ve developed something of a talent for it.)

The woman kneels beside them, resting a tentative hand on William’s heaving shoulder. “What’s wrong, sweetie?” she asks cautiously. “Do you kids need help?”

“We lost our parents at the airport,” Emily lies. “We lost them in the crowd trying to get on our plane, and then all the seats were full. They couldn’t get off their flight, and there were no more outgoing flights because of snow. So they said they’d wire us money to buy plane tickets, but money’s so tight right now, and…” Tears jump to her eyes without much summoning; their situation (or entire life) is distressing enough that she can easily summon up some sadness. “We can’t get a plane ticket or a bus ticket home.”

“I just want my mom,” William sobs, and it is not an entirely out-of-place sentiment.

The woman regards them melancholily, tucking a strand of dark graying hair behind her ears. Finally she says, “Well, maybe I could… buy you bus tickets, and call your parents and let them know you’re headed home. And they could pay me back when they get the chance.”

Despite her delight at hitting where she’d been aiming, Emily shakes her head firmly, enjoying how her hair doesn’t swing like a heavy rope when she moves her head. “No, I couldn’t let you…”

“Don’t be silly,” the woman says. “It’s Christmas soon. You need to be with your family.”

_Whoever the hell that is,_ Emily thinks, forcing herself to smile gratefully. She _is_ grateful, just tired. And hungry. Pop Tarts aren’t filling.

William wipes tears from his cheeks and sniffles. “Thank you, ma’am,” he says, something definitely learned from books, because they’d never been very nice with the nurses or the smoker.

“Of course.” The woman offers her hand, and after a second of studying it warily, William takes it, and they walk with her over to the ticket place. “Where’s home, sweetheart?” she asks (one or both of them, Emily can’t tell).

She remembers something that maybe-their-mother had told her years ago, how she lived all the way on the East Coast, in… “Virginia,” she says. “As far as you can get us into Virginia. They can come and get us there.”

The woman buys them two tickets to Richmond, Virginia. “You’ll be sleeping on the bus,” she says apologetically. “And you’ll need money for food…”

She presses two hundred-dollar-bills into Emily’s hand, who can hardly believe their luck. “Thank you so much!” she breathes in astonishment. She hadn’t expected her to be _this_ nice - in fact, she’d kind of thought they might get slapped or have the cops called on them. Which wouldn’t be terrible unless they’d take them back to the smoker. Would they? She doesn’t know, doesn’t want to find out.

“It’s my pleasure.” The woman takes a pad of paper out of her purse. “Now, what’s your names?”

“William and Emily Sim,” Emily improvises. She thinks she might’ve been called Sim, a long time ago.

The woman starts a little, and for a second, she wonders if this strange grandmother-looking woman might know who they are. But instead, she just asks for their phone number, and Emily rattles off numbers at random, without hesitation. (The woman looks confused at all the consecutive fives, but she writes it down dutifully.) Their bus leaves soon; by the time she figures out that they aren’t who they said they were, they’ll be gone. She scribbles something on the lower half of the sheet, rips it in half, and hands the lower half to Emily. “My name’s Maggie,” she says. “Call me if you need anything, anything at all, okay?”

Emily folds it up and sticks it in her pocket, smiling sweetly at the woman - Maggie. “Thank you, Maggie.”

“Yes, thank you!” William chimes in.

Maggie looks between them suddenly, studying their features like maybe she really does know them. She must not find anything, because she just hugs them after asking if it’s okay, and tells them to be careful. Emily’s never been hugged before - or at least not in a long time - and it kind of takes a lot not to beg Maggie to take them home, and maybe give them soup or something.

“That was good,” William whispers as they go to get on the bus. “I’m glad you didn’t make me, like, throw her to the ground or something.”

“A little old lady? Seriously, Will? What do you take me for?” She can’t believe that someone helped them. The first person she tried, too. Maybe the world isn’t as bad as books have prepared her for.

“She was nice,” he says contentedly. “Hey, what’s in Virginia? Our mother?”

She thinks, absurdly, of the song last night in Wal-Mart. “I hope so,” she says.

***

They spend three days on the bus. Emily reads to William from the new books she buys at a Barnes and Noble at the mall they stop at to eat in. (Irresponsible, maybe, but whatever. They’ve been reading the same grubby stack of books for years now; they need something new.) They watch the country flash by through the windows, noting the states’ names. _We’re in America?_ William asks her silently.

_Guess so,_ Emily says back. _I think we were in California._

The seats are comfortable, and not many people talk to them, which is nice. Two grubby-looking kids in Christmas sweaters looks pretty bizarre, she supposes. Mostly, she just tries to remember the woman after her first parents. She can come up with what she looked like, dimly, but not her name. She thinks a little about her other parents - how her mom would swing her up into her arms and sing to her, how her dad would tease her and tickle her side. She had a normal life, once. She wonders if Will ever did. She kind of wishes she’d stayed with her first parents, but maybe then she’d never have known her brother.

As long as they keep moving, in a heated bus with comfortable seats and surrounded by people who more or less ignore them, everything feels okay. They’ve stood still for so long that anything else feels like flying.

***

In Richmond, they run out of money.

It’s even colder there, with snow on the ground, and they have nowhere to sleep. They find a group of homeless people who offer them blankets and let them stay in their little alley space. Emily doesn’t offer much information about their identities, and a woman shares her food with them.

William gets sick, coughing wetly.

She hopes he’ll get better on his own, but he just gets worse. She should’ve known, people need medicine to get better. He gets stunningly hot and sleeps a lot, sweaty head lolling against her shoulder. She tries to come up with something to help him, but they’ve never really had that power.

If they were in a book, she’d come up with something. Or maybe their mother would find them on the streets, cold and shivering, and take them in and magically make William well again. But it doesn’t happen. Will shivers wildly in her arms.

She has to get help, she decides one morning when William won’t wake up. She scoops him up clumsily and carries him until she sees a hospital with a church-y sounding name.

The emergency room is packed, of course, and the nurse tells her there will be a wait. “You have to help me!” Emily shouts. “My brother is really, really sick!”

“So are a lot of people here, sweetie,” the nurse says gently. “You’ll have to wait a little bit. Where’s your guardian?”

“I don’t know,” she grounds out. It takes a lot of self control not to hurl him against the wall. William is too heavy in her arms, and she needs help. Nothing in their entire goddamn lives is fair. Where is their mother? Why did she never come for them? Or maybe she did and she’s dead and… Or maybe she doesn’t care. Maybe she gave them to the smoker.

No strength left in her legs, Emily sinks to the ground in defeat. She doesn’t want to cry, but she can’t help it. She sobs, tears landing in William’s dark thatch of tangled hair. Her wails fit in well with the other moans and cries that echo off of the walls.

Eventually, a woman with red-gold hair kneels beside her, placing a hand on her shoulder. It’s been a long, long time, it seems, since Emily’s been touched that tenderly and it feels good, better than she expected. “It’s okay,” the woman says soothingly, white coat scraping the dusty floor. “It’s okay, sweetie. I’m Dr. Scully, and I’m gonna help your brother, okay? What’s wrong with him?”

Emily gulps, trying to hold in the tears. “He’s sick,” she says. “He’s hot and sneezes and coughs a lot.”

Dr. Scully puts a hand to William’s forehead. “Jesus,” she mutters. She turns her attention on Emily, taking in their condition. “You both look terrible,” she says, back of her wrist to Emily’s forehead. “And you’re both burning up. Where are your parents? Do you have someone who takes care of you?”

“No,” she says, only now feeling the scratch in her throat. “No, we’re alone. I… don’t think we have any.” She wants to tell the doctor where they ran away from, maybe she can help.

“Okay, that’s okay.” She squeezes Emily’s shoulder. “And what’s your brother’s name?”

“William.”

Dr. Scully flinches - Emily doesn’t know why - but she keeps leaning over William, brushing sweaty hair off of his forehead and checking his pupils. “And what’s your name?” she murmurs, hair shielding her face like a curtain.

“Emily,” she says softly, fingering the jagged edges of her own hair.

Dr. Scully looks up in astonishment. She stares at Emily, searching for something like Maggie did - and unlike Maggie, she seems to find something there. She gasps a little, bringing her hand up to touch Emily’s hair gently.

And all of a sudden, the memories crash back into Emily’s head - of blue eyes and freckles and crayons and _my name is Dana, do you think you could come with me, sweetie, do you like coloring, how do you feel, are you okay, it’s going to be okay, don’t go._ “I remember you,” she whispers.


End file.
